The amiga had another advantage compared to the consoles: The Demoscene. This is where i grew up in, while it has nothing to do with games (mostly, groups like the silents formed DICE after their pinball games and stuff) the amiga learned me coding (AMOS lol) , doing graphics (Dpaint IV) and making music (Protracker), and these skills learned then are still being used today in my work, forever gratefull for that. The amiga is still very alive today. Sure u can say that of the snes/megadrive today with a few indy game releases now and then but its nothing compared to the amiga scene today.
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My thoughts after trying every SNES, Genesis and Amiga game
- Thread starter cormack12
- Start date
calistan
Member
Faster framerate? What?
My lineage of games machines of that period was Amiga (sold so I wouldn't become a recluse at university), Mega Drive (bought because I missed having a games machine) and then SNES, which I got after I saw one running in the window of an import games shop and realised I'd backed the wrong horse. Sold that Mega Drive quickly. The SNES was far more advanced.
Slower cpu often lead to chunkier games. The snes had way better color and sample based sound so they could use real instruments more often. There is a good reason snes is mostly remembered for its RPGs which is a genre which benefits greatly from it high quality music (sampled), its color pallete and special effects all while the charactere have a slower movement speed or static menus and combat in general which helps mask its choppy framerate.
They played to its strength. People make fun of the "blast processing" campaign but it was always referring to the faster cpu which is the reason for the frequent fps disparities on multiplatform games.
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I find it brave to say Amiga was your winner and it's your valid opinion. But as an Amiga fan, I'd strongly disagree on technical levels. Game variety and size, sure. Floppy disks and 512MB for the Europeans really held games back. 1MB machines more commonly found in North America allowed for better games.
European games are pretty stiff in terms of animations and design. The Amiga could support 2 fire buttons, but very few developers took the time to use it. Don't get me wrong games like Wings, Rocket Ranger, Lemmings, Arabian Nights, Lotus 2, Turrican 2, Beast 3, Premiere, Wolf Child, Ruff N' Tumble and some of the later 1993/94 efforts are absolutely amazing. Fate of Atlantis is Indiana Jones 4 to me.
Budgets and size of teams were much smaller for Amiga games, and it absolutely shows. The CD32 did not do the brand any favors and the AGA chip set was never pushed. Give it a cartridge version, with bigger budgets and Japanese developers for arcade ports? Maybe.
For every great game there is something from US GOLD like Street Fighter 2 or really crap arcade ports, Castlevania or Ninja Gaiden come to mind. Not their fault since they didn't have help.
Amiga might be more memorable.
European games are pretty stiff in terms of animations and design. The Amiga could support 2 fire buttons, but very few developers took the time to use it. Don't get me wrong games like Wings, Rocket Ranger, Lemmings, Arabian Nights, Lotus 2, Turrican 2, Beast 3, Premiere, Wolf Child, Ruff N' Tumble and some of the later 1993/94 efforts are absolutely amazing. Fate of Atlantis is Indiana Jones 4 to me.
Budgets and size of teams were much smaller for Amiga games, and it absolutely shows. The CD32 did not do the brand any favors and the AGA chip set was never pushed. Give it a cartridge version, with bigger budgets and Japanese developers for arcade ports? Maybe.
For every great game there is something from US GOLD like Street Fighter 2 or really crap arcade ports, Castlevania or Ninja Gaiden come to mind. Not their fault since they didn't have help.
Amiga might be more memorable.
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calistan
Member
I guess I never compared multiplatform games on either of them!
I remember when I got the Mega Drive (a Hong Kong import version that played everything) it came with Sonic and a couple of random Japanese shmups, and it was so clear that none of those would have been possible on Amiga.
But then SNES with Pilotwings and F-Zero looked even better than that, and Super Mario World showed me that Sonic was all style and no substance. Funnily enough I didn't play any RPGs on the SNES, and only played Zelda many years later when it came out on the GBA.
RoboFu
One of the green rats
Huh? You must have played a different Amiga than I did.. 
The amiga was no where near the snes and genesis in tech or games. It could only do 8 sprites at a time and had no parallax abilities. Devs had to do tricks like repeating sprites (like with the Atari 2600 ) and animated tiles to give the illusion of more objects on screen and parallax, but those tricks had severe limitations.
The amiga was no where near the snes and genesis in tech or games. It could only do 8 sprites at a time and had no parallax abilities. Devs had to do tricks like repeating sprites (like with the Atari 2600 ) and animated tiles to give the illusion of more objects on screen and parallax, but those tricks had severe limitations.
Putyouinmyoven
Member
Homie what on earth is you smoking?
JCK75
Member
I was poor and had no game consoles growing up, I had a TRS-80 COCO 2 I had worked shingling houses at the age of 10 for 2 weeks to purchase (not a real job, just a friend of the family asking for help and paying us). But my best friend had a Commodore 64 and it was the shit, I wanted one so bad but would go over to his house a lot to play it.. then one day he got the Amiga (no clue which one) he had been talking about it forever and the graphics just blew my mind..
Then like a month in he got busted on a BBS for pirating games, all of his computers were actually removed from the house until he was 18 so I never got to play again.
Then like a month in he got busted on a BBS for pirating games, all of his computers were actually removed from the house until he was 18 so I never got to play again.
calistan
Member
Wow, that's harsh! The 16-bit computers were a pirate's dream back then. Every magazine carried personal ads saying "Amiga / ST contacts wanted" and you'd send a list of new stuff you'd got and pretty soon there would be packages of disks flying all over the country. Mostly games, but modems were rare so it was the easiest way of getting into the demo scene.
We also used to pirate the postage, by covering the stamps with clear tape so you could wipe them clean before reusing the package. Lucky nobody cottoned on to that, I think.
MonkeyClaw36
Banned
EVERY snes/ megadrive game? #DOUBT!!
That would be thousands of games, including jdm games, usa only, LR games, EVERYTHING?
Yeah...... NO!!
Nice try though, nice try...
That would be thousands of games, including jdm games, usa only, LR games, EVERYTHING?
Yeah...... NO!!
Nice try though, nice try...
The Amiga 500 cost more than the consoles yes but if you factor in how much more expensive games were for the consoles then it evens it out a lot. Plus the Amiga was a full fledged computer so you could do so much more on it. 41 Amiga games got ports to the Genesis so they were quite intricately tied together, a big thing was that they used the same 68000 processor.
Did you ever play Kid Chaos or Mr Nutz Hoppin Mad on the Amiga 500? They both give Sonic a run for his money.
That is incorrect the Amiga had dual playfield parallax since inception in 1985 https://www.manualslib.com/manual/1318229/Commodore-Amiga-A1000.html?page=76 In fact it could be argued that the Amiga popularized parallax with Shadow of the Beast. The other systems tried to copy it but Shadow of the Beast looks way better on the Amiga than the Genesis or the unreleased SNES version. Agony had 3 playfields like the SNES. Lionheart had more extensive parallax than any other 16 bit game, Elfmania, Kid Chaos, Mr Nutz, Jim Power etc etc parallax was everywhere on the Amiga.
For the Japanese SNES games I didn't physically play everyone (wouldn't be able to figure out the menus etc for a lot) but I watched Youtube videos of all the Japanese exclusive SNES games and then played the ones that I thought I'd like and quite a few made the list. For all the other games I did try them all for at least a few minutes. It was very tedious going through the N's on the Genesis for sure, so many sports games NBA this, NFL that, NCAA this, NHL that, made me want to take a long break from sports gamesEVERY snes/ megadrive game? #DOUBT!!
That would be thousands of games, including jdm games, usa only, LR games, EVERYTHING?
Yeah...... NO!!
Nice try though, nice try...
RoboFu
One of the green rats
Not really it had 2 playfeilds but that was intially meant to be for status bars and such. the amiga can LINE SCROLL basically the whole one back playfield of individual horizontal sections to create a paralaxe effect. Thats how shadow of the beast worked. it's not true parallax in the sinse of the snes and genesis that could have indivdual maps of tiles. But also people learned they could cheese the effect of more layers using animations and the sprite redraw trick.
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No it wasn't just meant for status bars etc. it was true 2 independently scrolling playfields from the start. Here's an early example from 1988 in the game XR-35 The Amiga didn't have a tile system it used bitmaps but Shadow of the Beast wasn't just line scrolling it was dual playfield and a lot of other smart coding with the copper etc. Here is a breakdown of how it was done https://codetapper.com/amiga/sprite-tricks/shadow-of-the-beast/
calistan
Member
Billy Awesomo
Neo Member
Low key GOAT system of that era (at least in m heart, Also Neo Turf Masters is the greatest golf game ever!)
BlackTron
Member
He also said that if he had to pick one system, it would be SNES. Which is a strange and curious distinction, but whatever. To me, it showed he has taste, but is struggling to reconcile his personal feelings for Amiga and its large action game library against the gained knowledge that SNES is just better.
The fact that he played every single last game, on all three, means that if you like 2D action games you pretty much have to check his notes. Most of us have probably played a decent handful of titles from that era, but not THAT many. My opinion is pretty consistent with his on games I've played, such as being impressed by Disney games and Contra, so if other titles made his list, there's a decent chance I might agree on many of them. Better place to start than blind.
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I got similar enjoyment out of playing Sonic (only played the first one extensively so far) then I did with Kid Chaos and Mr. Nutz. I didn't like the overworld map part in Mr Nutz but the platform parts were great fun. I give props to Sonic for being first but technically they are similar. No loops though, I read somewhere that Sega copyrighted the loops used in Sonic so other games weren't allowed to recreate them. Not sure if that's true, only reference I could find quickly at the moment is https://www.digitiser2000.com/main-...nine-gaming-patents-you-never-even-knew-about The unreleased Amiga game Blaze did use loops but never came outI like Amiga, but that is madness. A run for his money...
RoboFu
One of the green rats
that game is a pretty awesome tech feet on the amiga but it doesnt use hardware scrolling for the background. it use bitplanes with delayed offsets and few other tricks. But those guys do deserve a lot of props.
If you look at this large clear video you can see the "jerkiness" of the background delays.
Then main reason no really used the dual playfields is because it severely limits the game in colors and cycles as well as limits the amount of sprites down to 6 if i remember correctly. I m pretty sure there is a lot of documentation on this on the net.
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No, that's not what I meant, here's the relevant part "The Overall winner for me is definitely the Amiga, it was my first love and maybe it's my bias but its games just have that je ne sais quoi. Action games are supposed to be the bread and butter of the consoles but I found over 100 more action games to play on the Amiga. I also discovered a lot of good games on the consoles but I'm pretty sure I'll spend the most time going back to games on my Amiga list over the other two. If I had to choose only one console to have it would definitely be the SNES. Again it had more variety and the graphics were better so any game that was shared by the SNES and the Genesis I will return to the SNES version with only a few exceptions. Since the Amiga list and Genesis list shared a lot more games if you were to have a limited budget or limited time the combination of the Amiga and the SNES would probably be your best bet." I just said SNES was the best console, not best system, the Amiga isn't a console (except the CD32 which could lead to confusion). So to clarify I meant the best system for me was the Amiga, then SNES, then Genesis.
You're wrong about this, the Amiga has and always has had dual playfield. The color limitations can be overcome with the copper co-processor. As the Shadow of the Beast link I sent you says "The game is basically running in dual playfield mode, 2 playfields of 3 bitplanes each, therefore 8 colours (really 7, as one of them is transparent) on top of another 8 colours! This may be hard to believe when you look at the screenshot above." https://codetapper.com/amiga/sprite-tricks/shadow-of-the-beast/ AGA Amigas upped the color count to 15 in the foreground 16 in the background. Heck just a few weeks ago I was trying out the Scorpion Engine (game making engine for Amiga and Genesis) and made my own crude dual playfield scrolling routine for the Amiga
I mean.....
There were a lot of bad arcade ports on the Amiga for sure but you won't find any of them on my list of 312 games.
calistan
Member
Well if you're talking enjoyment, sure. Sonic is the epitome of style over substance, so I'm sure there are plenty of Sonic rip-offs that are just as much fun to play.
I stand by what I said about things like Sonic being impossible on the Amiga. Just look at this crap - it's a later Amiga game too, when programmers were acquainted with all the tricks:
cireza
Member
When talking parallax I like to post this stage as example of what the MegaDrive could do.
That's Gley Lancer. You have a very smooth line scroll effect, and then you have a distortion effect at the bottom.
I personally think that parallax are the most impressive when layers are overlapping, because I don't think it is as simple as line scroll anymore. You get this in Thunder Force 4 for example
Or another shmup I like, Bari Arm on the Mega-CD
That's Gley Lancer. You have a very smooth line scroll effect, and then you have a distortion effect at the bottom.
I personally think that parallax are the most impressive when layers are overlapping, because I don't think it is as simple as line scroll anymore. You get this in Thunder Force 4 for example
Or another shmup I like, Bari Arm on the Mega-CD
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01011001
Banned
there is no fucking way that you tried all of the more than 4000 estimated Amiga releasea... it's only an estimate because the sheer number of games released back then was astronomical. the Amiga had a huge indy scene after all.
so you most likely missed more than "some"
more likely is that you missed thousands
so you most likely missed more than "some"
more likely is that you missed thousands Well different strokes for different folks, I quite enjoyed Mr Nutz and played through the whole game a few months back. There was also a finished version of it made for the Genesis which didn't officially come out but had a ROM. It has more colours than the Amiga 500 version but no zooming bosses. Compare 56:38 here to 3:40:56 here for the final boss. I initially took this as a victory of the Amiga over the Genesis but in trying to be 100% fair later came across this final boss in the Genesis version of Lawnmower Man at 37:21 which does have zooming
I love talking parallax. Those examples are nice, especially the Thunder Force IV cloud level as that is arguably one of the best done levels on the Genesis. You might be interested to know there is a game in development for the Amiga 1200 that is heavily influenced by Thunder Force IV called Boss Machine that looks amazing and I am very excited that it will get released As for parallax my favourite go to Amiga examples are Lionheart level 1 say 6:17 here Agony level 4 say 16:56 here and Elfmania boat or water stage say 4:10 here I think those trump any Genesis parallax examples.
It was only commercial Amiga games for the most part which taking out duplicate versions is somewhere just over 3000 games. You can believe me or not but I did do it over the last 6 months, I probably have too much time on my handsthere is no fucking way that you tried all of the more than 4000 estimated Amiga releasea... it's only an estimate because the sheer number of games released back then was astronomical. the Amiga had a huge indy scene after all.
so you most likely missed more than "some"
I did miss a few games, just the other day I discovered Gotcha for the Amiga but I didn't add it to the main list, just my personal return to list.
cireza
Member
I had already seen these games in the past. The parallax effects are definitely very nice, smooth and can be several screens high. Good pixel-art as well. But I always really liked European developers work anyway, so many interesting ideas
You might have enjoyed Sub-Terrania on MD. Excellent game. A bit too difficult though.
After all, MegaDrive and Amiga shared the same main processor family (if I recall correctly) which helped European developers get on board.
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I think I'm living in a different Multiverse, because in mine, Amiga had more colors on screen than SNES and MD combined because Copper, and better 3D games.
The problem with Amiga games is many of them have a a shitty artstyle, I think because of the lack of Japanese developers there.
And then, USGOLD.
The problem with Amiga games is many of them have a a shitty artstyle, I think because of the lack of Japanese developers there.
And then, USGOLD.
01011001
Banned
It was only commercial Amiga games for the most part which taking out duplicate versions is somewhere just over 3000 games. You can believe me or not but I did do it over the last 6 months, I probably have too much time on my hands
I mean I believe you that you played all the games you found, but I bet there are hundreds missing.
commercial games on those old home computers aren't always 100% accurately documented. you could have a tiny company and release commercial games that were only produced/sold in tiny numbers, given the open platform nature there was no licensing or centralised documentation.
like Quik & Silva was developed and on the market within 2 weeks! literally... 2 weeks from start of development to being sold.
it's very likely that there are a ton of Amiga games that are only really known in some regions, or slipped through the cracks due to the low production numbers.
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01011001
Banned
the Amiga could have many colors on screen through some tricks for sure. but the SNES could display a shitload of colors by default.
so I bet even if japanese devs were involved, we wouldn't hsve seen many games with more than 32 colors, at least not outside of cool color fading effects here and there.
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It is true that it's hard to document but sites like https://hol.abime.net/ do a great job. Many of their contributors are on the English Amiga Board and they are constantly adding new things that slipped through the cracks. A few months back a bunch of new Polish games were discovered so it is a work in progress. There are already 16 games listed as released in 2023 https://hol.abime.net/hol_search.php?Y_released=2023 but I know it's even more than that. If you follow Saberman Retronews on Youtube I think he catches pretty much every new release. https://www.youtube.com/@Saberman
Just to note as I'm sure you know it was the OCS/ECS Amigas where 32 colors was the norm. There were quite a few games with more but they were the exceptions. With AGA so A1200/A4000 and CD32 the colours on screen and palette matched the SNES.
S0ULZB0URNE
Member
I played most of the noteworthy games released for those platforms, including imports.
It comes down to SF|SNES and Genesis|MD for me as I can't choose.
BlackTron
Member
Ok, sorry, I guess the real takeaway is your fav is Amiga largely thanks to a hugely larger library of action games, but if you were stranded with one system it would be SNES due to the greater variety and graphics.
Sometimes, variety be damned, even one game can really skew a console on personal preference, so it doesn't matter. So I see what you are saying here. When we say Genesis is nothing but shmups, beat 'em ups and platformers, sounds pretty awesome to me and gives it a great identity. Especially when one of those games is Sonic. (Yes, I ignored the sports games).
01011001
Banned
yeah, that's the issue, noone had the AGA models
if you used Half Brite then some early models wouldn't work, if you used HAM8 or AGA it wouldn't work on the most popular models. and if you had multiple modes for different models you had extra work making sure all the pallets look good.
and so most Amiga games indeed only had a fraction of the number of colors on screen that the SNES does.
I bet half brite was among the more commonly used graphic modes that displayed more than 32 colors, being that the A500 supported it, but even that was rare.
so while it's indeed more nuanced, in practice the Amiga had typically way fewer colors on screen than the SNES.
No, I'm saying I prefer the Amiga in every situation. It has my favourite games, plus the ones I'm most impressed by and there are more fun action type games on the Amiga for me to play through than any other system. I only would prefer the SNES if the only choices were SNES or Genesis. The mainstream consensus is that the SNES and Genesis had more and better action games and I disagree. If I liked action games AND strategy, simulation, rpg games etc. then the Amiga would win by an even greater amount.
Yeah just as each system had a definite look each caters to niches. There's a zillion soccer games on the Amiga, if you like American sports games then the Genesis is probably your best bet. JRPG's then obviously SNES. Like you I really like shmups and platformers, beat em ups not as much and there a ton of those on the Genesis and SNES. So besides beat em ups, American sports and JRPG's the Amiga has lots of everything else and thus as an action bias gamer the Amiga wins for me.
BlackTron
Member
Closest matchup in gaming history and we still can't decide. I always loved the Sega (as I called it back then) especially as a big Sonic fan. But both back then and today, I find myself going back to SNES much, much more. It's just really hard to trade blows with all those Nintendo first party games and RPGs. And lets face it...the Genesis controller was always terrible compared to SNES. It was partially good, because it meant simpler control schemes and easier to pick up games, their main game Sonic was one button. It's a different thing that carved itself out vs the SNES.
You really made me doubt my reading comprehension here, having replied to your post and then you quoted your post AGAIN to set me straight. What did I miss??? So I read it again, here it is:
So, I'm not sure how you can say that, while also saying you prefer Amiga in every situation. Edit: I guess you were saying if you could only have one console between SNES/MD it would be SNES, but in the context of that paragraph you are discussing all three including Amiga and that is not really clear, a bit confusing. In any case, sorry if I misconstrued the meaning of it.
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I'm in the middle of going through the PC Engine/Turbo Grafx 16 library and noticed two things. First of all the huge discrepancy between one game and the next in terms of graphics. Most of the non shooters have very rudimentary, almost 8 bit graphics (I know it's just an 8 bit CPU and a 16 bit GPU) But then you have games that look great like Ninja Spirit, Blazing Lazers, Override etc. The second thing ties into the first because I think a big part of it was that the system came out in 1987 when 8 bits were still king. It happened with the Amiga too, many of the early games didn't look much better than 8 bit games.
This got me wondering about my list of 312 Amiga games. I wanted to go through and see how many games were on the list from each calendar year. I created a chart and it pretty much corresponds perfectly with this theory. Since I'm very partial to graphics as the 16 bit era got more established and coders and artists got a better feel for the system I was enamored with more and more games. This peaked in 1994 with 56 games from that year on my list. This was maybe a little skewed because that was the main year of the CD32 and usually the most definitive version of an earlier game was on the CD32. Also I emulate on a TV with an X-Box controller so often the easiest to configure games are the CD32 versions. So this gave a few more entries to 1994 from games that weren't initially released that year, although in those cases most were originally out in 1993, less so in 1992 and not very often before that. I haven't done it yet but I'm sure if I made the same chart for my Genesis and SNES lists it would turn out very similar, as the years went on the games generally got better and so did the visuals.
It's ironic that after a lot of people wrote off or abandoned the Amiga is when in my opinion the most timeless and lasting action oriented games were released for the system. Another thing very apparent from the chart is how we are experencing an Amiga gaming renaissance as of late. Between 2001-2015 (115 on chart) there are only 4 games on my list, yet in the last 7 years (1623 on chart) there are 16 games on my list. That has me excited about the future and is great news for 2D pixel art.
This got me wondering about my list of 312 Amiga games. I wanted to go through and see how many games were on the list from each calendar year. I created a chart and it pretty much corresponds perfectly with this theory. Since I'm very partial to graphics as the 16 bit era got more established and coders and artists got a better feel for the system I was enamored with more and more games. This peaked in 1994 with 56 games from that year on my list. This was maybe a little skewed because that was the main year of the CD32 and usually the most definitive version of an earlier game was on the CD32. Also I emulate on a TV with an X-Box controller so often the easiest to configure games are the CD32 versions. So this gave a few more entries to 1994 from games that weren't initially released that year, although in those cases most were originally out in 1993, less so in 1992 and not very often before that. I haven't done it yet but I'm sure if I made the same chart for my Genesis and SNES lists it would turn out very similar, as the years went on the games generally got better and so did the visuals.
It's ironic that after a lot of people wrote off or abandoned the Amiga is when in my opinion the most timeless and lasting action oriented games were released for the system. Another thing very apparent from the chart is how we are experencing an Amiga gaming renaissance as of late. Between 2001-2015 (115 on chart) there are only 4 games on my list, yet in the last 7 years (1623 on chart) there are 16 games on my list. That has me excited about the future and is great news for 2D pixel art.
bigdad2007
Member
When it comes to the lower quality games on the SNES and Genesis you have to remember that many games were never made to actually sell to end users on their own.
A ton of licensed games were made as part of marketing for big films, and some third party originals, with the intent to basically just sell copies to blockbuster for something for them to rent.
Blockbuster and other rental stores were essentially the Gamepass of the pre internet era. Sure they had the top tier games but those were always rented so you had a whole market of games that existed to be a two night rental like Home Alone 2 or Home Improvement.
A ton of licensed games were made as part of marketing for big films, and some third party originals, with the intent to basically just sell copies to blockbuster for something for them to rent.
Blockbuster and other rental stores were essentially the Gamepass of the pre internet era. Sure they had the top tier games but those were always rented so you had a whole market of games that existed to be a two night rental like Home Alone 2 or Home Improvement.
Fatal Chuck Yeager
Member
AGA doesn't compete with a single one of the systems you listed.
At that time cheap PC clones were outperforming Amiga.
nkarafo
Member
That's why i said "it was supposed to". Because it was marketed as a 32bit system along with the others.
I agree, AGA was not great. But it was still better than the Genesis/SNES, no?
That's an interesting theory I hadn't seen before.
I made the other charts of the games on my list by year for the SNES and the Genesis. Don't have time to analyze too much at the moment but I think the big takeway is that 1994 was the peak year for gaming in my opinion, all 3 charts agree. 1994 was also great for music, what a year!
